Closed Bug 270299 Opened 20 years ago Closed 20 years ago

Ebay Search Tracker URL

Categories

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Product:
Firefox
Component:
Search
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
major

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED FIXED

People

(Reporter: Matti, Assigned: steffen.wilberg)

Details

(Keywords: fixed-aviary1.0)

Attachments

(2 files, 2 obsolete files)

updated patch
707 bytes, patch
steffen.wilberg
: review+
axel
: approval-aviary+
Details | Diff | Splinter Review
updated xpi
973 bytes, application/x-xpinstall
Details 
With bug 265522 the URL for a ebay search in the german Firefox version got
changed to a "tracker URL".
FF1.0 doesn't ask http://www.ebay.de for a search result, it asks http://webtip.ch.

A User can only trust the Domain Name (see phising) and different Domain Names
let people think that they are doing data mining.
http://webtip.ch is an external company (not ebay) and users don't expect that
their search is redirected to an external company. They don't know that
webtip.ch is the technical partner of ebay and EBAY.DE asked us that we SHOULD
use this URL for a search.

Many Users are very angry and Mozilla.org lost the trust of many people !
(They compare FF to the usual Spyware applications)

This is article in one of the most read german computer magazins (sorry german):
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/53308

WE must change the URl to an ebay.de one or remove the plugin in the german
build (IMHO).
*** Bug 270269 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Well, actually it's not a bug, but more like an annoyance. With the release of
FireFox 1.0 PR, I started to see other search engines listed in firefox search
bar. At first I wasn't that much shocked about it. But I was wondering why
there're just the five of them. 

And after I saw a discussion of de-DE version of Firefox, I understood that i'm
totally right on my worries. That search bar is totally generates a bias on
search ing mechanism. That must be the last thing that mozilla foundation or any
FREE (as in speech not beer), software advocate would like. Since ancestor of
mozilla (netscape) is suffered from that bias microsoft created over browsers,
mozilla should be more than careful about that. Considering the search engines
in the list are all commercial companies (and that includes Google) having them
in Free product does not look like right. 


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
fire up firefox
Actual Results:  
You see list of search engines, that's actualy popular ones, but still it must
be YOU that choose which of them to have in search bar list. One thing more as
you can't wipe off IE from windows, you can't wipe off the search engine in that
list without deleting the related files from shell. There's no gui, aka easy
way, to get rid of them. 

Expected Results:  
Instead of default search engines, user should use add engine link, (and make it
work well of course) and choose the search engines in his/her favor. That of
course will annoy some people, but it's better to be that way to have not biased
firefox. We want it free as in speech, not free as in beer (like spyware etc.) 

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=164892&postdays=0&postorder=asc&postsperpage=15&start=0

That's the discussion over de-DE version of firefox, and that unfortunate
situation that firefox acts like an exact spyware. 

There can be claims like google, or any other search engine is defacto standard.
But however then anyone can also claim IE is defacto standard too? I'm totally
against any commercial search engine (commercial like getting profit from
searchs, so not like having search is free).


That part is omited on the post: 

(In reply to comment #2)

> But however then anyone can also claim IE is defacto standard too? I'm totally
> against any commercial search engine (commercial like getting profit from
> searchs, so not like having search is free) 
to be involved in firefox on a clean install.
> 
> 


baris: Please don't morph my bug ! 
This is about how the search is done and not that there is an ebay search in FF
as default.

As long as Mozilla asks the server that I'm expect as user (and not a third one).
Your discussion doesn't belong into a bug report, my bug does because it's a
privacy and trust thing....

You can discuss that we me via email but don't continue your started discussion
in my bug !

Thanks
(In reply to comment #2)
> We want it free as in speech, not free as in beer

Then turn away from official Firefox, as it uses registered trademark, which are
NOT "free as in speech" because they simply can't be. Turn to something that you
compile from soucre yourself and that doesn't include any trademarks, or
anything that would guide you to somebody who probably even donates money to
Open Source projects (as I'd expect of companies that are included in a default
search bar, for example). But that's OT here anyway and should go into some
newsgroup or forum anyways.

Not using an ebay.xx URL for the eBay links seems incorrect though. As it's in
German Firefox, I consider A. Topal has to care about it. Reassigning.
Assignee: p_ch → a.topal
I'd love to not make duplicate arguments. This is a very brief executive summary.

The l10n policy says that any changes beyond those granted by the policy have to
be approved by the foundation or one of its affiliates. This particular search 
URL was approved by me on behalf of Mozilla Europe. It was coordinated with 
Bart. Mitchell knows about the URL, this bug and the plans.

There is a good understanding with me that this shouldn't have happened. But it 
slipped my mind and a few others while doing that. Despite good reasons to use 
that URL we are evaluating the technical possibilities to not do that.

This is what *I* want this bug to do. We need a bug for that, this one exists.
And I don't think that the process is off-topic.
We need technical help here. We need a scheme how to fix this, and we need tests.
The CDs are out, so we need a good solution for those builds.
We need a good solution for the builds on ftp, too.
There are "foo releases" of this build as well.

I´m tentatively leavin this bug on a.topal, but he´s the localizer. He wouldn´t
write the extensions or whatnot required to fix this bug.
Keywords: helpwanted
Two options:
1. Use the silent auto-update facility by uploading a new searchplugin to
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/de/products/firefox/eBay.src.

2. Or relase Firefox 1.0.1. Provide an xpi, announce it via software-update in
https://update.mozilla.org/update/firefox/de-DE.rdf. Remove or update eBay.src
from the mozilla-europe.org to prevent auto-updating to the previous state.
This would be similar to the 0.10.1 release,
see http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2004-10-01-02.html and
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/0.10.1/patches/259708.xpi.

Option 1 is a lot easier, but users might not like that, especially because
there is no prompt whether or not they want the update to be installed. Option 2
makes a lot of noise. But that's still better than to again act behind our
users' back.
We should just make new German 1.0 builds, replace the bits on FTP, announce it
where ever we feel like it needs to be announced, and move on.

I'll work with Chase to get us a new round of builds and we should hopefully be
able to have something on Monday or Tuesday. Mozilla-europe people can work with
the foundation on messaging and hopefully announce something on Monday or Tuesday.
Attached patch patch for the de-DE eBay.src (obsolete) — — Splinter Review 
This is the patch we need for the new builds. The url is copied from the
ebay.de plugin on http://mycroft.mozdev.org/quick/ebay.html.
Attachment #166540 - Flags: approval-aviary?
We can provide this xpi so that users don't have to download and install a new
build. It uses basically the same technique as the 0.10.1 update xpi I
mentioned in comment 8.

I'm assuming we don't release a 1.0.1 version, but simply replace the 1.0
builds, as Asa suggested. So this doesn't bump the app.version and
general.useragent.vendorSub strings to 1.0.1. This means that we can't use
Software Update though, because the update system wouldn't know whether or not
the update is already installed.

This is not a "real" extension. It doesn't show up in the extension manager,
and it doesn't display a message whether its installation was successfull.
Whatever we do, we mustn't forget to update or remove
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/de/products/firefox/eBay.src. Otherwise the silent
auto-update will kick in and replace the new eBay.src by the old one.
Comment on attachment 166540 [details] [diff] [review]
patch for the de-DE eBay.src

I'd like to do this change to the src on m-e, too.
If we think that keeping the src on m-e is acceptable to users. Otherwise, we
need to change the update URLs, too. If we do that, we probably need to fix the
ebay icon on mycroft.
Comment on attachment 166540 [details] [diff] [review]
patch for the de-DE eBay.src

Tristan and I agreed to keep the plugin on mozilla-europe.org. This avoids
possible headaches due to conflicting names of installed and updated
searchplugin from mycroft.
I'd prefer if bsmedberg did the approval on this one.
Attachment #166540 - Flags: review+
Attached patch updated patch — — Splinter Review 
Peter's change introduced a trivial error into the eBay.src on the
mozilla-europe server: Instead of
description="eBay.de - Online-Auktionen", it now reads
description="eBay - Online actions".

This description doesn't show up anywhere in the UI, and we promised to not
change the searchplugins on mozilla-europe.org without prior notification, so
Pike and Topal suggested to leave it as is.

So I'm updating my patch to prevent an unnecessary auto-update of the
searchplugin.
Assignee: a.topal → steffen.wilberg
Attachment #166540 - Attachment is obsolete: true
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Attachment #166540 - Flags: approval-aviary?
Attachment #166760 - Flags: review+
Attachment #166760 - Flags: approval-aviary?
Attached file updated xpi — 

        Attachment #166541 -
        Attachment is obsolete: true

    
    

    
  
(In reply to comment #16)
> Peter's change introduced a trivial error into the eBay.src on the
> mozilla-europe server: Instead of
> description="eBay.de - Online-Auktionen", it now reads
> description="eBay - Online actions".

Huh? I most definitely didn't touch the description, I just changed the action.

    
    

    
  
And it should be 'auctions', not 'actions' :-/.

    
    

    
  
Peter, the "actions" error is in
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/plugins/ebay.src as well. Maybe you
copied it from there?

    
    

    
  
(In reply to comment #18)
> Huh? I most definitely didn't touch the description, I just changed the action.

Oops, my bad.

(In reply to comment #20)
> Someone needs to post the xpi on ftp.m.o, like
> http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/0.10.1/patches/259708.xpi.
> 

This is not a platform dependent fix, so IMHO, it shouldn't be placed into
platform dependent locations. This would just confuse folks. That's a major NONO
right now.

    
    

    
  
> This is not a platform dependent fix, so IMHO, it shouldn't be placed into
> platform dependent locations. This would just confuse folks. That's a major NONO
> right now.
How about
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.0/patches/de-DE/ebay.xpi ?

    
    

    
  
(In reply to comment #23)
> > This is not a platform dependent fix, so IMHO, it shouldn't be placed into
> > platform dependent locations. This would just confuse folks. That's a major NONO
> > right now.
> How about
>
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.0/patches/de-DE/ebay.xpi ?

Yeah, if it's platform independent, this location will work fine.  I'll add the
XPI to the site now.

    
    

    
  
Comment on attachment 166760 [details] [diff] [review]
updated patch

a=Asa. Mitchell, Tristan and Brendan know about this, too.

        Attachment #166760 -
        Flags: approval-aviary? → approval-aviary+

    
    

    
  
checked in attachement 166760.
I also checked the xpi, that works fine.

Let's keep this open til the builds rolled out, IMHO.
Keywords: helpwanted → fixed-aviary1.0

    
    

    
  
We need to move the FIREFOX_1_0_RELEASE tag to the new revision (1.1.2.3).
It looks like I don't have write access to the l10n repository; cvs co and diff
work fine though.

    
    

    
  
We have new de-DE builds to test that should include this fix.  I will shuffle
the CVS tags for m/browser/locales/de-DE/searchplugins/eBay.src.

    
    

    
  
1. de-DE eBay search plugin XPI patch is in 1.0 releases directory.
2. New de-DE builds have been uploaded to FTP/HTTP site (needs some time to
mirror out).
3. FIREFOX_1_0_RELEASE has been moved to the latest revision of eBay.src. 
FIREFOX_1_0_RELEASE_ORIGINAL points to the revision of eBay.src we originally
shipped with.

    
    

    
  
Thanks all!
-> fixed.
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 20 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED

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